Broccoli is an excellent superfood almost everyone will enjoy in both its cooked and raw forms.

What are superfoods? They are foods that are perfect in the nutrition that they provide you. Broccoli looks like a small tree with a thick trunk that happens to be green and not brown. The head is made up of tiny tight projections that form the florets. All parts of broccoli are nutritious. Broccoli is classified as a cruciferous vegetable along with cauliflower. It smells bad when it is cooking (due to the sulfur compounds it contains), but it tastes good with a little low-fat butter spread and salt and perhaps a dash of vinegar. Broccoli is versatile, too, since it can be eaten raw, or lightly cooked as part of a stir-fry.

Broccoli is an antioxidant which fights the damage to your body caused by free radicals. Free radicals come from the environment, cigarette smoke, toxins in the air, stress and eating the wrong foods. Over time, they can increase the incidence of cancers and other age-related diseases, and make you act and feel older than your years.

Eating broccoli can help reverse that process before it even begins to be a problem. Here are some of the other benefits of this superfood.

* Broccoli contains flavonoids – These are a particular type of antioxidant. In broccoli they help shield you from lung, breast and gastrointestinal cancers.

* Broccoli can help preserve your memory – Broccoli contains substances that can help to reduce the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease. It inhibits the enzyme acetylcholinesterase from doing its job which is to break down acetylcholine. This is a brain neurotransmitter that is responsible for memory pathways. Eating broccoli performs the same action as some drugs that are given to Alzheimer’s patients to retard that process. Other foods – apples, oranges and even potatoes – also help, but not as much as broccoli.

* Broccoli cleans out the liver – The liver is a filtering organ that helps get rid of impurities in the body. Thanks to our modern lifestyle, it can become overwhelmed. Eating broccoli helps to clean out the liver so it can function better.

* Eating broccoli raw or steamed will give you the most nutrients of all. The less amount of processing done, the better. And remember to eat both the stalk and the florets.

If you want one single food that can fight disease, slow the aging process, restore your memory and give you a great deal of antioxidants? Try broccoli today.

(Note: You may be one of a small percentage of the population whose DNA causes you to experience broccoli and similar foods as very bitter. For more information, see: http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=87